The Straw
by Kansas42
Summary: He's drunk enough to tell the truth and not drunk enough that the truth doesn't hurt. Tag to What Is and What Should Never Be. Sort of. Repost due to change of rating.


Author's Notes: So I started writing this before I actually saw "What is and What Should Never Be," so it's a little AU but not in a totally huge way. Much with the angst, but that should be expected. Also much with the swearing, though that could be expected too.

Disclaimer: Still don't own Supernatural. No djinn has emerged yet and offered it.

"The Straw"

So it's a nice night out, maybe just a little warm, maybe just a little bit _sweaty_ for Dean's tastes, really, but that could be the booze talkin' and maybe it's not warm at all, and there's this chick on his arm so he doesn't really care much about the weather.

This girl, she's got big blonde hair that even Dean can tell is fake, but her tits are pretty obviously real, and _wow_, are they impressive. And also in his face, and he's thinking, _Yeah, this is turning out to be a nice night. Shot in one hand, chick in the other, boobs in face? I can do this. I'm good._

And then Sam walks in, all gigantor and broody, and he sits down next to Dean and says, "Hey," quietly. And that _sucks _because he was hoping that Sam would just leave him alone tonight, leave him to hang out and drink and cope the way he fuckin wanted to. But Sam's got full emo-eyes going, and that soft 'hey' was a dead giveaway; 'Hey, I know what you're going through. Hey, you can talk to me. Hey, I'm here for you and, also? I'm the biggest fuckin buzzkill in the world.'

And Dean's not into that, that talking out your sorrows and cry on your shoulder crap, so he barely acknowledges Sam's presence with his own, "Hey." Hopefully, his 'hey,' says something like, "You know what, Sam? I'm doing fine over here, and hey! Check out this blonde? Is she smokin' hot or _what_?' 

That's what he hopes for, anyway, as he grins at his brother, but Sam's emo-eyes only narrow, and _damn_, does he _have_ to be such a whiny little bitch? Apparently, he does, because Sam ignores Dean to stare at the blonde, and now he's giving her what is very clearly a "Fuck off" look. Granted, it's the politest "Fuck off" look he's ever seen in his life, because _Sam_ minds his manners, because _Sam_ is _educated_, but it's still a "Fuck off" look and the blonde takes the hint. She only gives Dean the faintest disappointed sigh before finding some other guy to fuck.

_Shit, now she probably thinks Sam's my boyfriend or something. Seriously, what is WITH people thinking that, anyway? _

Dean knocks back his shot of whiskey wordlessly, and Sam sips his beer for a few minutes in silence before finally asking, "You wanna talk?" And _Jesus_, what kind of a dumbass questions is that anyways? Isn't Sam supposed to be smart or something? Don't you have to have a few brain cells before they let you into Stanford? Does it look like he wants to talk?

Men don't go to bars to talk. First lesson taught by John Winchester, glorious bastard that he was. Men go to bars to drown their sorrows, in either liquor or women or both. In John's case, it was never the latter. In Dean's, it almost always was.

"Might've," Dean says. "Might've, but you jus' send my new friend 'way." 

And okay, so maybe he's more than just a little buzzed if he's slurring his words that much, but he can _hear_ that's he slurring his words, and that's gotta count for something, right? Besides, fuck it, he's earned his right to drink today. He has _more_ than earned his right to get fucked up today.

Sam, in the meantime, is smirking his ginormous head off. "Yeah, Dean," he says. "I'm sure that _talking_ is exactly what you had in mind with that girl."

And Dean has to grin at that. "Maybe not," he admits. "But thass jus' cause I'm notta pussy, like you." He waves the bartender over to order another shot, and the bartender gives him a look he really doesn't care for. "Wha?" he says belligerently. D_on't look at me like that. I'm FINE. __  
_  
The bartender does not look impressed and Sam's sitting there muttering, "Jesus, Dean," and God, he's so _sick_ of that; he's so sick of Sam's bitchiness. It's always, "Jesus, Dean, why are you such a screwup?" and "Jesus, Dean, how can you be this dumb?" and "Jesus, Dean, do you even know? Do you even know what a fucking waste of space you are?" God, Dean's tired of Sam's condescension, of having to be superior _all_ the _fucking_ time, and yeah, okay, Dean's a little drunk right now, but he's got the right to be. He's got the right, and Sam says, "Jesus, Dean," like, "Jesus, why did I have to get such a fucktard drunken loser for a brother?"

Dean turns so he can yell at Sam directly to his face, and he wobbles on his stool a little and Sam reaches out a hand to steady him. Then _Fuck him, I'm FINE, godammit_, and Dean shoves Sam away so violently that they both almost fall to the ground. So of course the bartender's all, "That's it," and _fuck_, that fuckin _sucks_, because now Dean's getting kicked out and he didn't even get his last shot, and everything was _fine_ before Sam showed up. _Dean_ was fine before Sam showed up.

Dean tries to tell Sam this and some garble comes out instead, but Sam appears to understand because understanding drunken slur was Basic Hunter's Training 101. Another life lesson by John fuckin Winchester and _too bad I don't have that shot to toast that glorious bastard. __  
_  
"Me?" Sam's saying incredulously. "You don't think maybe you made a mess of things yourself?"

Will nobody listen to him? "'m fine," he says.

"You are _not_ fine," Sam says sharply and there's a moment of quiet before his voice softens a bit. "It's okay to not be fine, Dean."

So Dean considers this for a moment. "Kay," he says. "Maybe 'm nah so fine, aft'rall."

Then he's on the ground and puking, mostly on Sam's new shoes. 

They're at the motel now and Dean's sitting on the bathroom tile and there must have been a car ride somewhere in between because Sam's got freaky visions and can move things with his huge head, sometimes, but he can't fuckin teleport and that bar was _not_ within walking distance. But, you know, fucked if he can remember it, and _crap_, he's starting to feel queasy again, so he's got his head over the toilet and puking his guts out, and he figures the car ride couldn't have been that important anyway.

And where the fuck is Sam; that's something else he'd like to know. Little bastard got him kicked out his bar, made that blonde chick run away for some kind of heart-to-heart, bullshit moment, and now Dean's here in the motel and Sam isn't even—_oh. There he is_. Sam's coming into the bathroom now and, sure enough, he looks pretty typically righteous and angry and pitying all at once, and Dean just wants to pass out now so he can miss out on all the bitchery. Pass out and maybe sleep for a week, a month, god a fuckin _year_, until it was all over with. Until the Demon was gone, until evil had been destroyed, until a day where he woke up not wishing for his mother.

God, he's just so _tired_, so tired of it all, and of course here Sam is, ready to talk, ready to make everything suck harder.

"How are you feeling?" Sam asks as Dean flushes the toilet. Dean gives a little grimace and leans back against the wall. It feels so cool, just so fanfuckingtastic against the heat of his neck, that he lets himself close his eyes and doesn't bother to answer his brother.

"Dean?" Sam's saying. "Dean? Dean?"

"God, 'm fuckin peashy, Sam," Dean slurs without bothering to open his eyes. His head has begun to throb and god_damn_, isn't it kind of early for that?

What he needs is a bottle of Jack—or Jose or Jim or, God, a fuckin' Budlight would do it—just _something_ with a bit of alcohol to push back the pain until he's ready to deal with it. But he can't do that because _Sam_ is here, in all of his condescension and all of his superiority; _Sam_ thinks he needs to talk, to grieve and whine and cry his little eyes out, because _Sam_ is really just the biggest _pussy _in the world, and Dean's not even sure how they're related, sometimes.

And God, _God_, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be the fucking best thing in the world? Then he could kill Sam because Sam's turning evil, or might be turning evil; either way, it wouldn't matter. Dean wouldn't care because Sam wouldn't be his brother, so he could just kill him and be done with it and finally, finally just rest. Nobody would be looking to him to fix things, be a hero. Nobody would be looking at Dean to somehow save souls.

If they weren't brothers, Dean could stick a shotgun in his mouth, because he would be finally be free to just fucking give up.

But they were, they were brothers, and Dean wasn't free, and now Sam's talking about expressing, about not bottling things up. And god_damn_ if he isn't relentless, if he isn't as relentless and impossible as their old man, and the sound of Sam's voice is driving into Dean's skull.

"Please, Dean," Sam's saying. "Just tell me what happened, man."

And, "God," Dean says, because Sam will just _not_ shut up. He glares a little at his brother, although he has to squint to even see straight. "You know wha' happen'd, man. Was a ja—jid—genie. Made me wish. Made me wish . . ."

He doesn't want to talk about wishes. They're shit, anyway, and he doesn't want to think about them, but Sam's moved in front of him now and Dean has no control over his personal space. He wants to fight back, wants to stand and walk away, but he's dizzy just sitting, and if he stood, he'd just fall over.

So he sits there and he wishes that Sam would just stop talking. But Sam isn't a genie, and he doesn't grant wishes so easily.

Sam says, "What did you wish for Dean?" and Dean smiles a little, because God, he's drunk. Drunk enough to tell the truth and not drunk enough that the truth doesn't hurt.

"Ne'er happened," he says and Sam frowns, confused. Dean smiles, wider; yeah, his genius brother's not that smart after all. "Mom. The fire. Ne'er—never happened. All, it all was as if . . ."

He trails off and closes his eyes against the pounding of his forehead, expecting Sam to ask more questions, to pressure him to continue. When he doesn't, Dean opens his eyes and looks at his brother, and Sam doesn't look so righteous anymore, just quiet, really, just sad. And it's funny but Dean actually prefers the superiority, because the sympathy in Sam's eyes is just too much too bear.

And he bears so much already; he's already carried every godamned thing, and he can't carry anything else—he doesn't _want_ anything else. And this was too much, this was just too _fucking_ much, knowing how it could have all turned out, knowing how it could have all been okay. And it had been okay, it had; for just a little while, everything had been fine; _Dean_ had been fine. And his mother had been there to hold him, to just sit there and love him and hold him. And say

"Things gonna be a'right. She said ev—everything's gonna be all righ'."

And Sam's holding his hand now and he can feel it, sorta, but he can feel his mom more, her hand on his face, comforting him. Just for once, Dean hadn't been in charge; he got to let go of the reigns and have someone take care of _him_, and he had to see _all_ of it.

See it, but not keep it.

And it was just one weight too many, the straw that broke the camel's back, only it wasn't really a straw. It was his fucking dead mother.

"She said, she said—but it's not. It's not all righ', Sammy, nuthin is. She was 'live, Sammy, she was a-live. _God_. She was right . . .fucking . . . there."

And godammit it because he's crying now, he's tired and drunk and fucking _weeping_ and Sam looks lost but he's also holding Dean and saying, "Shhh. It's okay. It's okay, Dean." But Sam doesn't get it because it's not okay, and isn't that what Dean was just trying to tell him? Maybe he's slurring his words worse than he thought now. Maybe Sam just couldn't hear that everything was fucked.

"It's not okay," Dean says desperately. "It's not, it's not." But Sam won't listen to him, just holds him, and Dean wants to make Sam understand that he just can't _do_ this anymore. But when he says that, when he says, "I can't, I can't, I _can't_," Sam just soothes him and says he can. "You can, Dean, you can."

And Dean's pretty sure at this point Sam doesn't have the slightest idea what Dean's talking about, but that's okay because Dean's not really sure, either, not sure exactly what it is he can't do. Maybe hunting or dealing with Sam's "destiny" or just walking this world another fucking day, knowing that his mom's dead and never coming back and his Dad is in Hell and burning for Dean. Dean just can't do it anymore, not _any_ of it anymore, but he also can't let go, can't give up the ghost and just die already.

Because there's Sammy, there's always, always Sammy, and Dean isn't free to leave him all alone.

So he cries and Sam holds him the way his mother had just hours ago, and Dean knows that tomorrow everything will be back to normal. He knows that tomorrow he'll have the worst fucking hangover of his life and Sam will mock him in brotherly retribution and also watch over him and be there. And Dean will bitch and grumble and swear off alcohol for the rest of his life _(well, at least a week, Sammy, that's practically the same thing, right?)_ and then Dean will be back in control and hunting evil and protecting Sammy from whatever the Demon's plans are, from turning evil and destroying the world and other such hilarity.

Dean knows that tomorrow he'll be _Dean_ again, the big brother and kick ass hunter, not the drunken mess he is now, not the broken child crying on the floor for his mother. Tomorrow they'll be back on the road, doing what it is that they do. Tomorrow they'll be back on the road, looking for the hunt that will take them down.

Tomorrow will be all of that, but for today Dean's okay with just lying in his brother's arms and pretending that there's a way this can all end well.

Before he passes out on the bathroom floor, Dean says, "'m glad you don't 'member, Sammy." _God, I'm glad you don't remember._

_I wish I never knew._


End file.
